The Beebo Brinker Chronicles unfolds in an era when the cultural norm for American women was more homemaker Betty Crocker than feminist Betty Friedan. Based on a collection of lesbian pulp fiction classics by Ann Bannon, the theatrical Beebo Brinker follows the journeys of several gals and their gay pal from the early 1950s to the dawn of the ‘60s.

The Kate Moira Ryan-Linda S. Chapman play, an Off-Broadway success in 2007, is the second show from Fort Lauderdale’s Kutumba Theatre Project, an LGBT-friendly company run by Kim Ehly. The script isn’t as strong as Ehly’s own Baby GirL, Kutumba’s memorable debut production. Yet in new digs at the Galleria Mall’s Galleria Studio Theatre (home of the Fort Lauderdale Children’s Theatre), director Ehly and a strong cast mine Beebo Brinker for not only its noir-style humor but for the sobering, resonant truths about the characters’ search for happiness in a judgmental world.

James Gary Burton was 6, growing up in a small town in Indiana, when his father decided he should have music lessons. Looking for the appropriate instrument, the family attended several music performances, including one by a marimba and vibraphone teacher.

“I don’t really remember this experience, or even the fact that I apparently showed sufficient interest to convince my parents this was the instrument I wanted to play,” Burton says in his autobiography, Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton, to be published in September by Berklee Press.

But vibraphone it was. And just like that, the improbable path of one of the great jazz musicians of his generation was set. Burton, 70, grew up to be a master vibraphonist and bandleader, the winner of seven Grammy Awards and an influential educator at one of his field’s leading schools, the Berklee College of Music in Boston. ...

And that is only part of the story. There’s also the tale of the kid who “around high school age … first sensed confusion about sex,” and felt he was “somehow different from the other boys.” With no one to confide in, he writes, “I coped with the confusion as best I could, given I was growing up in ’50s rural Indiana.”

“It was just scary,” he says now. “I had these feelings and I knew they weren’t accepted, so I was terrified about them. I spent the next several decades burying those feelings.”

And so Burton would go on to live, as he puts it, two lives: the first one as a twice-married man, father of two; the second, beginning in the 1980s, as an openly gay man.

Associated Press has published a profile of movie and TV star Shirley Jones (Oklahoma!, The Music Man and The Partridge Family).

Jones, 79, has written a tell-all autobiography, in which she recounts her marriage to Broadway star Jack Cassidy, their three-way with another woman and his own affair with composer Cole Porter.

From AP reporter Lynn Elber:

Jones' book "includes — X-rated spoiler alert — Cassidy’s impressive endowment, Jones’ own “highly sexed” nature that made orgasms a breeze, their threesome with another woman ('yuck,' she says, when asked about the onetime experiment), Cassidy’s pre-marital sexual encounter with Cole Porter that Jones says left her unfazed, and her apparent tolerance for his infidelities."

Miami author and editor Ily Goyanes is steamed because a New York politician complained her book, Girls Who Score: Hot Lesbian Erotica, is too accessible to children at the Brooklyn Public Library.

WABC-TV reports that New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, an Orthodox Jew, has gotten constituent complaints about Goyanes' book and others like it at the library.

"This should not be accessible for young people, that is the issue, and it is right there in your local library, these titles, basically pornography," Hikind told WABC's Eyewitness News.

Goyanes, a finalist for a 2013 Lambda Literary award, says Hikind only complained about LGBT erotica and not the straight kind.

“I was shocked to see Assemblyman Hikind on the news, holding up my book instead of 50 Shades of Grey – a title more kids would be familiar with and probably actively seek out," Goyanes said in a news release. "Why didn't he target the Marquis de Sade's works? Or Story of O? Were there these specific books, such as Best Lesbian Erotica and Girls Who Score, targeted because the word 'lesbian' is on the front cover? I'm not sure the erotic content of my book is what he takes issue with. I am a strict believer in the First Amendment as well as civil rights. Apparently, the assemblyman is not.”

Goyanes continued:

“Some of the best books ever written have been banned or targeted for some kind of persecution, but this is just wrong. Libraries contain all kinds of books that portray sexual content in a literary, non-pornographic way, from romance novels, to how-to guides to contemporary fiction. Should we segregate all these books? Librarians can only do so much. Parents need to monitor what their children are reading. Censorship is not an option.”

“We have to gather our forces in this state and do what has to be done to make sure marriage equality is accepted in the great state of Florida,” said Orman, who lives with wife Kathy Travis on the ocean in Broward County’s Hillsboro Beach.

Orman, a well-known author and CNBC program host, appears in a new HBO documentary that begins airing June 27, The OUT List, which also profiles gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender public figures including Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris and New York mayoral candidate Christine Quinn.

“I’ve been gay my entire life,” Orman says, explaining why at age 62 she’s become a leading national gay-rights figure. “It’s really important when people look at you, they see who you really who are. Not who they want you to be, but who you really are. It’s important that people see the truth. They love the truth. Of course they see me as the personal finance expert in the United States, but it’s also important that they see me as a lesbian woman because that’s who I am. Then, just maybe, some of those financial qualities can rub off and open the door to homosexuality that has always been closed before.”

The Supreme Court any day will announce whether it will toss a portion of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the part that prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages performed in and out of the United States.

“People ask, ‘What’s the big deal about being married,’” says Orman, who wed Travis nearly three years ago in South Africa. “When it comes to insurance, estate benefits, pensions, it’s really important that this happens on the federal level, not just the state level.”

Orman says her marriage-equality fight is for “a very selfish reason.”

“The financial discrimination that a gay couple, especially a wealthy gay couple, has put upon them is atrocious,” she said. “It’s no secret that KT and I are very wealthy women. KT was wealthy in her own right before I met her. Ms. Travis and I, if one of us dies, we’ll be losing approximately 50 percent of the estate we built over the years. if we were legally married and recognized by the federal government, I could leave Ms. Travis a billion dollars and never lose a penny to estate taxes.”

Orman said that even if she and Travis became primary residents of New York or California and had to pay state income taxes there, it would still be cheaper than living in Florida, where there is no state tax.

“We would be paying more in estate taxes here than we could ever pay in state income tax in New York or California,” she said. “[Moving] would save us millions and millions of dollars in the long run.”

Hairstylist Charles "Chip" Lunsford of Hollywood has written a short novel, Running With George, about a man named Chick who starts life over at the age of 49.

"His partner died two years before and he went through a two-year black hole, in which he was drinking heavily and engaging in unsafe sex," Lunsford said. "What happened with him is that when he woke up one particular morning and he looked at himself in the mirror, naked, he said, I need to get this sorry ass in shape."

Lunsford, 54, said he has "always kept myself in shape, but at the age of 50 something blossomed inside me. I became the man I always wanted to be."

Here's a short introduction written by Lunsford:

"I come from a long line of storytellers. I am the first one to put pen to paper (or in this case, fingertip to keyboard). My grandmother, father, brothers, nieces, and nephews would regale everyone, wide-eyed with excitement, with stories of our family history. Like the wizard, in the Broadway show Wicked, said to Elphaba, “There are all kinds of stories that aren’t true…where I come from, we call it history.”

I was with my partner for over twenty-six years, sixteen of those years we had lived in Miami Beach. My mother reminded me that when I was a child, watching The Jackie Gleason Show, the helicopter would swoop down and fly over Miami Beach; the television camera showing the shore in all its glory andI would exclaim, “I’m going to live there one day!” Well here I am… sort of. That relationship has ended. I am with another man and we live in Hollywood… Hollywood, Florida that is.

Being the youngest of four children I was left alone frequently and have been making up stories in my head ever since. As an adult, I began writing down snippets of action or conversations, thinking that they would make a good story. I have three dogs that I walk early in the morning and I tell bits and pieces of my stories to them. They know more about my characters and storylines than anybody other than me. They’re the best at keeping secrets.

I have written a short novel titled Running with George. Here is a short summary of the story. A week after Chester (known as Chick) turns forty-nine he views his reflection in the mirror in his dining room and vows, “to get his sorry ass in shape.” As he is bending over to tie his running shoes, he hears someone coming up behind him and looks up to see the finest ass and legs in a pair of black spandex shorts he has ever seen. What starts out as a possible love interest becomes more than a friendship that helps Chick rejoin the human race. Running with George proves that anything is possible through love, dedication, and a good, hard sweat.

In the span of one year, we spend a lifetime with Chick and his partner Ed who passed away from heart failure two years earlier. Chick emerges from a self-imposed black hole to find himself out of shape, lonely and almost fifty. Like the lyrics from Alannis Morresette’s, Ironic, “you meet the man of your dreams and then you meet his beautiful wife.” His friendship with George comes with a little surprise; he’s married to Bella and they have two children. Things quickly change.

What makes this story unique is that it is very human. Each chapter is one month. Each month we watch Chick grow and change, The morals of this story are, you are never too old to begin again, or you can create your own family and turning fifty is NOT the kiss of death. The title Running with George has a double meaning, the first is obvious, that the men run the beach together. The other meaning is to run or hang out with one another. Very hip for a couple of old farts, wouldn’t you say? You don’t have to be gay to empathize with Chick. He tells his story of love and loss so honestly that you can’t help but become friends with him very quickly. It seems like you are sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee (or in this case Jack and soda).

Chris Beck played high school football. He bought a motorcycle, much to his mother’s dismay, at age 17. He grew up to become a U.S. Navy SEAL, serving our country for twenty years on thirteen deployments, including seven combat deployments, and ultimately earned a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. To everyone who saw him, he was a hero. A warrior. A man.

But underneath his burly beard, Chris had a secret, one that had been buried deep inside his heart since he was a little boy—one as hidden as the panty hose in the back of his drawer. He was transgender, and the woman inside needed to get out.

This is the journey of a girl in a man’s body and her road to self-actualization as a woman amidst the PTSD of war, family rejection and our society’s strict gender rules and perceptions. It is about a fight to be free inside one’s own body, a fight that requires the strength of a Warrior Princess.

Kristin’s story of boy to woman explores the tangled emotions of the transgender experience and opens up a new dialogue about being male or female: Is gender merely between your legs or is it something much bigger?

CANNES, France -- Abdellatif Kechiche's lesbian romance "Blue Is the Warmest Color: The Life of Adele" has won the Palme d'Or, the top honor of the Cannes Film Festival.

The jury, headed by Steven Spielberg, took the unusual move of awarding the Palme not just to Kechiche, but also to the film's two stars: Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. The three clutched each other as they accepted the award, one of cinema's greatest honors.

Exarchopoulos stars in the film as a 15-year-old girl whose life is changed when she falls in love with an older woman, played by Seydoux.